Martin Luther King changed my life.

When I was feeling lost in my religion, especially since so many of my fellow Orthodox Jews were turning Trumpist, I began to wonder where I could find God in social justice.

It was MLK who helped me discover how the two are fused.

It seemed inherently *true*, but I didn’t know of anyone who could actually express the modern ideas around social justice with the ancient religion I had bought into a decade earlier.

So many people seemed to tend towards one or the other. God or social justice. Not both.

I saw this very often in the Orthodox world, where most ideas of justice tend to lean towards tribalism instead of a higher truth.

And I saw it in many liberal movements that prioritized (important) modern concepts without necessarily tapping into the eternal truth of their war.

As I found myself becoming more progressive due to noticing so many horrible inequities I had been actively or passively ignoring, this issue became almost existential.

I felt like two people. On religious and one an activist.

Where did the two meet?

Then I started listening to MLK speeches. It started as a side interest after I had been revisiting some of the spiritual leaders that brought me to religion, such as Alan Watts.

Listening to them, somehow, gave me such a deeper appreciation of them than their writing did.

It didn’t take long for me to get hooked to MLK’s speeches in a way no other spiritual leader could.

He was a prophet.

He was able to explain, in simple and stark language, how racial and economic justice were expressions of God’s will.

In retrospect, it seems silly to believe in a God who created a world of people built in Their image without also knowing that it’s our duty to fight for each other to be treated as such.

But such is religion: it’s easy to get lost in your own ego. That’s why prophets exist.

MLK made me realize that my job was to fight for others, not just my own people. And to do it with sensitivity and care in *how* it’s done as well.

That it shouldn’t just be a side project. Or a hobby. Or a hope. That it was a necessity.

And that God wills it so.

Too many people in the religious world are lost in using religion for themselves or their own. They don’t have a God-level, above the fray, view of their duty.

That’s why we have prophets. To remind us what we’re missing out on. To bring God back into religion.

Religions are dying. Not necessarily in numbers, but in moral relevance. It’s largely due to the fact that they have failed to live up to their moral duties.

That’s why we need prophets. That’s why we need MLK.

To remind us that religion has a unique duty in the world.

I was two parts, and MLK made me whole.

I’m so grateful for that, and it’s given me the power to keep persisting even when things seemed dark and hopeless.

MLK came to change America, but he did it partly through changing those who listened to him from the inside out.

That’s what religion can do at its best. It transforms us. It infuses our causes with a strength that can only come from the deepest parts of us.

That’s what MLK did for America and the world among so many other things.

He was America’s greatest prophets. May we learn from him.

A last note:

I’ve since been blessed to find great leaders who have been able to find this fusion of religion and social justice. A few examples:

@RevDrBarber
@TheRaDR
@ThatRabbiCohen
@CornellWBrooks
@DandiaAsad
@mordkhetzvi

And, of course: @BerniceKing